Short stories and poetry of all shapes, sizes and genres

Fisher-Spider

Once upon a time, as it always the best of times to begin a story from the beginning there lived a spider. This spider was no ordinary spider, for it was the largest spider ever to have been seen alive anywhere. To give an example of the size of this gargantuan arachnid, it was noted to be larger than your average tree, but no larger than your average cliff.

The spider was named Salmon, but Salmon was not designated a gender. (Disclaimer: if you don’t approve of the gender and/or moniker designation then I suggest you spin your own fictional yarn about spiders. This is of course my own tale, and I approve greatly of my choices.) Salmon, enjoying a day in Salmon’s life was actually rather not enjoying the day, as Salmon was often bullied by the other spider’s owing to Salmon’s monstrous size.

Salmon was shunned and often spent its days perched on top of a cliff where Salmon responded to its biggest critics by eating them; all manner of man, beast and intergalactic spacecraft alike, none were safe. After a short period of time, as it often doesn’t take long for the oppressors to respond to punishment stimuli, oppressors became no more through fear of being devoured. Salmon now had very little reason to eat things, as now his motive had been removed. Bizarrely, or maybe not so depending on your knowledge of spider neuroses, Salmon did not deem hunger to be an adequate motive to pursue the consumption of comestibles.

From Salmon’s vantage point of view on the non-descript cliff of Salmon’s residence, Salmon could see boats upon the sea, casting nets into the water and drawing out huge catches of fish and sea mammals. Salmon kept Salmon’s eight or so beady eyes on the fisherfolk (fisherfolk because of political correctness, even though these particular fisherfolk held amongst their ranks not one female) and noted how they went to market to sell their wares. This provided them with wealth and food, a double-whammy of motives for our heroic spider.

Salmon got to thinking and began a-plotting. During Salmon’s sleep one night many dreams came to our spider of the moment, and upon waking Salmon put them into action, except the one where Salmon dressed as a whoopee cushion and lay in wait for people to tread upon it before eating them, but the next portion is not too dissimilar.

Salmon awoke as I had previously mentioned, and began to weave a gigantic web. This web was so immense in size that it was catching everything in the near vicinity. This provided Salmon with some mild snack goods while phase two of the plan was in the offing. Phase two was ready to begin, and Salmon laid the web beneath the ocean blue. Our most favourite spider of now was grinning inanely as spiders often do when such a plan is coming together, and went to wait upon the non-descript cliff. Once all the fisherfolk were out enjoying themselves winning the family bread, Salmon hauled the web out of the sea, taking everything from in it out of it.

The web was of such immense size that everything was trapped within; fish, sea mammals, crustaceans, sea weed, sea kelp, coral, sea birds, fisherfolk and their boats. Salmon was delighted at the scale of the catch and proceeded to eat all that could not be sold at market. Then once all had been eaten that was so desired to be, Salmon took the remainder of the catch to market. Due to the amount of fish caught, Salmon was now selling fish to the world over. Every geographical location was now aware of Salmon’s fishing business, and all could get fish at cheap prices.

Of course no one else could fish, for Salmon saw these as the new oppressors, and so fished them all as well to take as a snack. This continued this way for many years and Salmon became the most powerful entity on the planet, owning over half of the entire world’s wealth owing to Salmon owning the seas and oceans through fear.

Unfortunately, Salmon had all but exhausted the seas supply of creatures and so people thought that maybe they could cause a revolution. Unfortunately, Salmon had already quelled every single attempt at an uprising instantly by eating everyone who dared. The population of the world was now only around five million people strong.

Fortunately for the greedy, relentless humans, Salmon was a spider and so did not have much longer left before the icy hand of death took our favourite spider to the great beyond. This caused great excitement amongst all of mankind and they hurriedly gathered to discuss who would be the lucky human being to inherit all this wealth and fortune.

Salmon was indeed aware of the impending journey to the other side, and so called a meeting with the humans to reveal who indeed was to inherit the vast amount of cash. All the humans stood around the non-descript cliff with tongues hanging out, rubbing their hands with their greedy dreams still fresh in their brains. To their horror it was that they found out Salmon’s plan. Salmon had been busy during Salmon’s final days, and our most favourite spider had been in the laboratory and had created the successor to the world.

The humans stood about with mouths agape as from the lair emerged one million two hundred and thirty-four thousand five hundred and sixty-seven genetically engineered indestructible super millipedes. These were now the new rulers of the world, but luckily for the humans, they ate nothing but grass. The humans were able to re-populate the earth to a certain degree, but they all lived in fear of their greed again being manifest in a humongous super-spider that eats everything and has a brain.